A New Haunting: Part 2. From Henry Hudson to Kieft’s War/New Amsterdam

The next layer of Lower Manhattan’s bedrock began being laid on September 11, 1609, when English explorer Henry Hudson sailed the Dutch ship Halve Maen (Half Moon) into New York Bay to claim the region for the Dutch Republic. The Hudson River bears the explorer’s name.

Between 1609 and 1614, the Dutch explored the Hudson River, developed the fur trade, established relations with Native Americans, and founded New Netherland with Fort Nassau in 1614 near present-day Albany. The Dutch West India Company began creating temporary fur-trading posts in the broader region.

The first official Dutch settlers arrived in 1624, with Fort Amsterdam (New Amsterdam) being built at the southern end of Manhattan in 1625. The settlement served as the administrative and commercial center of New Netherland.

On May 4, 1626, the Colonial Governor, Peter Minuit, arrived and “purchased” the island from the local Lenape people for 60 guilders’ worth of trade goods (about $24). After the purchase, they began clearing the forests for construction, fuel, and farms northward throughout the settlement. Farms, known as bouweries, are where the term Bowery came from. The fur trade and other economic activities further challenged local ecosystems.

Willem Kieft, the Dutch colonial director-general, triggered a war through aggressive policies and military actions known as Kieft’s War from 1643 to 1645 against the Lenape and Wappinger peoples. The inexperienced Kieft, prone to spiteful or arbitrary behavior, demanded tributes from the Native groups. Attacks escalated into open warfare. He killed more than a thousand Indian men, women, and children. The soldiers snatched children from their mothers, cut them into pieces, and burned them or threw them into water before their parents’ eyes. Because the conflict endangered the Dutch colony’s survival, they sent Kieft back to the Netherlands, but his ship went down during the journey.

The question remains: why did the Dutch West India Company appoint someone with such a questionable background?